Review – Doctor Who: Special 2013 (IDW Publishing)

So as Matt Smith’s time in the TARDIS comes to a close (at least for now) what better way to enhance the experience than by reading IDW’s 2013 special – “The Girl Who Loved Doctor Who”. Written by Who Veteran Paul Cornell the brain behind the screenplays for the fantastic episodes ‘Fathers Day’, ‘Human Nature’ and it’s concluding episode ‘Family of Blood’, He has also written extensively across Doctor Who in other extended media be they books or comics and that’s before we get to the fact he is the darling of the comics industry writing titles for either Marvel and DC as of the past few years.

This was a great coup d’État on IDW’s part to make this issue happen because well… it just works!

I won’t just leave it at that but the basic synopsis that I would give you is that it is a story told from the perspective of a real life girl who encounters her hero The Doctor who has transitioned over to our world. Cue plenty of meta-humour but there is also a real heart [perhaps two?] to it as the girl is bullied but over the course of the tale learns a little something. There are times when the story is reminiscent of the Amazing Spider-Man story “The Kid Who Collects Spider-Man” some of the elements are there – Fan worship, The child who deals has great difficulty in their life and using the fans perspective to tell the story. I only bring it up because that is considered one of the true great Spider-Man stories. Now the comparison I made is just one I feel can be made, I’m not suggesting there is anything too borrowed far from it as this also delves into the deep vein of Whovian culture itself as the Doctor finds himself surrounded by what are to him familiar faces at a convention thus really adding to the love letter nature of this issue.

The artwork really appealed to me in a way that I could again make another comparison to someone I love but I don’t feel I should make too many because the work in this book is truly solid and really stands on it’s own. All the shame that it is a special and the last in IDW’s run, Now the license to Doctor Who has ran its course – Because I could just buy up lashings of more issues if they were this strong.

Putting it simply this is a great team, a great story and a great ending for both Matt Smith’s Doctor as well as IDW’s Doctor Who run.